$/PA is an overall valuation. It takes all kinds of things into consideration: arm for catchers, fielding ratings (range and glove), speed, base-stealing, and whatever offensive categories are used by the engine to simulate the games. Secondary fielding ratings is also a factor, and good fielding at secondary positions drives the $/PA up — a deterrent unless you plan to use the multiple positions. All other things being equal, a B/C+ 3B with secondary A/A+ at SS is going to cost more than someone with just B/C+ 3B defense.

It does not consider other factors you'll want to use in building a team, such as park, salary cap, theme restrictions, etc. It's a somewhat useful tool, unlike some of the useless tools populating the site.

I think boogerlips and joshkvt, you are both right but talking about two different things. This may be due to the fact that napolean's question could be understand in both ways:

What goes into pricing players is essentially answered by joshkvt.

But as boogerlips points out, $/PA is just the price of the player divided by PA, nothing more. So joshkvt's comment explains where the price comes from, and how it is determined. But let's remember that the overall number of PA is itself one of the factors that goes into determining the overall price of the player. as do overall IP.

So even lousy players who played full time - say a SS with 640 PA will often cost more than a .300 hitter with 350 PA.

So $/PA is the price of the player, one component of (many of) which is PA itself, divided by PA.

Yes, that follows, thanks booger. I was also thinking of trying to build a Theme using "$/PA" and "$/IP" as the main guidelines, but I have to fool around with the numbers awhile I think. My initial thoughts are to use"$/IP" and $/PA", but in a descending order of value. So hypothetically you would have to use 4-5 starters (probably 5) and each could not cost more than "(X)$/IP", for starter 1, 2, 3,etc. The same would go for your hitters. In this way it would more accurately reflect what we see in MLB today. Most teams spending big on a few pitchers and hitters, but obviously having to spend less as you go down the roster. This can be done just using X amount of $ per player, but having to use the $/IP and $/PA would throw an added wrinkle in. I was also thinking that you MUST use, lets say, a minimum of 3 starters post 1920, and maybe 4-5 relievers in the same time frame. The same would go for position players, in this way you would have to use the entire database to build your team. Any feedback on these ideas is most welcome.

Napolean, WIS "stretches out" players' PA and IP in real life to work out what they would have been in a 162 game season. So the statistics used usually here are PA/162 and IP/162, though we usually discuss them using the shorthand PA and IP.

If you look at those 1880s pitchers with the 400, 500, 700 IP, none of those guys actually pitched that many innings. In some cases they pitched only around 200, but in say 50 games, which was all that was played in whatever league they were in. Extrapolated to a 162 game season the WIS system gives them 600 IP/162 that is 600 innings pitcher for a 162 game season. Of course pitch that many innings and in real life your arm will fall off.

This is a way of normalizing, even the more recent eras of 154 versus 162 games played since 1960.